Perseverance …

A few years ago I was invited to teach a week-long Magnificent Spiral Mandala Quilts workshop at Quilting Adventures in New Braunfels, TX. I’ll never forget my first day there….when I asked who wanted to start with templates and who wanted to start completely from scratch they ALL said “From SCRATCH, of course!”

Alice was one of those students. This week I’m here in Marble Falls TX and she came to show me her finished quilt from that workshop. It certainly IS magnificent!

What she didn’t tell me, but someone else in the guild did, is that during the sseveral years Alice worked on this quilet, she also battled cancer several times.

Here’s to Alice!

Another Award-Winning Spiral Mandala Quilt!

Check out this beautiful quilt made by Jeric Fickes @jeriquilts. It won Best of Show! I love the colors she chose

CONGRATULATIONS Jeri!

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(The Sultana pattern is from my book Magnificent Spiral Mandala Quilts. There’s a link on this blog if you want to see it.)

Happy quilting! RaNae 🙂

A spiral mandala from Asilomar, CA

With all my focus on Free-Motion Mastery in a Month over the past couple of years, I haven’t been teaching spiral quilt classes as much. But I still get invited to teach my Magic Mirror Mandala class every couple of years at Empty Spools Seminars in Asilomar, CA, and I always say yes to this for two reasons: 1) I get an entire week with the same students so we have time to dig deep and do really original work, and 2) the setting, on the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, CA is gorgeous. Quilting and walking on the beach. Every day. For a week. It’s heaven.

This original spiral mandala design is by Biddy P., a student in my most recent workshop in Asilomar.  Gorgeous work, Biddy! Thanks for sharing!

Patricia Setlock sent me this photo of her mandala quilt.  It makes me think of blackbirds flying!

Mandala quilt at PIQF

 

As I was walking the show at Pacific International Quilt Festival I saw this beautiful quilt by Lesley Short from Australia and thought “That looks like one of my spiral mandala quilts.” Then I read the label and sure enough, she took her inspiration from Magnificent Spiral Mandala Quilts. It always feels like such a privilege to share someone’s creative journey. Lesley, I hope I get to meet you one day!

A spiral mandala in the West Village

Seen today at the intersection of 8th Avenue and Hudson Street….

Can’t believe it has been that long!

I just looked at the date on my last post and can’t believe it actually has been 8 months since I last posted!  I’ve been traveling SO much this year and the time has just flown by; I think that if I added up all the days I’ve spent in my own bed in the last year I would find that they are fewer than the ones I have spent somewhere else!  Not that I am complaining — it has been really fun spending time in workshops with so many talented, enthusiastic quilters all over the world.  (Today I’m writing from Rosario, Argentina, by the way.)

The down side is that I haven’t been actually sitting at a sewing machine quilting, or sitting at my computer writing, as much as I would like to.  But stay tuned . . . . as soon as I get home I’ll be making progress again and there are some exciting things on the horizon!

Studio visit: January 16, 2015 end of day

Batting, thread and background quilting samples done.  Ordered batting and thread.  I’m using Superior’s Kimono Silk – my fave for fine quilting.  Surprisingly, the dark green was the best for the grid lines on the background – it reads as a dark gold.  As a final sample I’m going to try a brown I’ve ordered – it will also read as a dark gold, I think.  I’ll see which one I like better.  I suspect the brown will be better for the quilting on the black inside the mandala.

Studio visit: January 16, 2015 start of day

Finally, 5 years later, I’m getting down to quilting Crimes of Passion. (That’s what a deadline will do for you!) I’ll post pix as the work progresses.  Last night I drafted quilting templates.

Chocolate Chip Mandalas (aka cookies)

As many of you know, I have fine-tuned my recipe over the years until I have reached what I consider the perfect chocolate chip cookie.  But my obsession doesn’t even come close to this person.  Read and fine-tune to get your perfect version of chocolate chip cookies:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/09/04/345530660/the-science-behind-baking-your-ideal-chocolate-chip-cookie

And in case you want my recipe, here it is.  Pay close attention to the process – it really makes a difference.

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9/20/11: I just tried something new with my chocolate chip cookie recipe and it turned out so amazing I have to record it. The background of this is that I was at Shakespeare in the Park this summer, and overheard a woman behind me talking about how she had baked her chocolate chip cookies for their picnic. I was so amazed at what I heard, I had to turn around and talk to her, and eventually she offered me a cookie to taste what she was talking about. They were AMAZING!  It boils down to two simple tips:

Tip #1: BROWN the butter before you mix the dough. Just melt it in a sauce pan and keep stirring it until it starts to turn brown. This takes about 5-6 minutes. Be sure to cool it before you add the eggs, so they don’t cook in the heat of the butter. I used salted butter.

Tip #2: Instead of 1 tsp. of regular salt mixed with the flour, toss in a teaspoon of coarse sea salt when you mix in the chocolate chips and nuts. If you wish, sprinkle a few grains on top of each cookie before baking.

The cookies gain a toffee-like richness, and the counterpoint of the pops of salt against the chocolate are divine.  I remember the woman saying that she had gotten the recipe from The Barefoot Contessa. I’ve looked in some of her cookbooks but haven’t found it — at least not yet.

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Preheat the oven to 375 F.

2 sticks butter (1 cup), melted but not hot (to brown it, see Tip #1 above)
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix these ingredients together with a spoon, NOT a mixer — you don’t want air in this dough.

Mix together (don’t sift):

1 cup all-purpose flour (I prefer unbleached) plus*
1-1/4 to 1-1/2 cups ground oatmeal (you can grind it in the blender; be sure to press it down in the measuring cup so it’s not fluffy)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt (If you are using coarse sea salt wait and mix it in with the chocolate chips and nuts in the next step — see Tip #2 above.)

* (Or, just use 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour)

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.  (You might want to start with the lesser amount of oatmeal flour, and add more if needed.) The dough should NOT be shiny or runny; it will be soft but firm enough to hold its shape.  If you have to add a bit of flour, add it one spoonful at a time, stirring after each spoonful, until the dough is no longer shiny.

Stir in:

1 12-oz. package chocolate chips (or better, half chocolate chips and half larger chunks of chocolate) (you can use milk or semi-sweet, your preference)
At least 1/2 cup of nuts (walnuts, pecans or hazelnuts), more if you love nuts
Sea salt (see above)

Now, the perfection is in the baking. First make a test cookie:

Drop a spoonful of dough (about 1-1/4″ in diameter) in the center of a baking sheet.

Put it in the freezer for about 5 minutes, just until the surface of the dough is firm.

Remove from freezer to oven and bake for 8 to 8-1/2 minutes. (You preheated the oven to 375 F, right?)

At this point, the top should not be shiny (no raw dough in the center) and the edges and high points over the nuts are just turning golden. If the center is still gooey, bake for 30 seconds to 1 minute longer. The edge of the cookie should curve around and under, like a “D” and the top should be flat. Freezing the dough helps make this happen — it slows the melting of the dough and helps avoid dreaded “Overcooked Edge Syndrome” which occurs when the edge melts flat onto the cookie sheet and overcooks. If OSE happens, put a couple more tablespoons of flour into the uncooked dough and make another test. Also, be aware that the consistency of the cookie will be different if you don’t put nuts in it, so if you don’t use nuts you may need to add even a bit more flour to make up for the architectural support that nuts provide.

When you remove the cookie sheet from the oven, let it sit with the cookies on it for a couple of minutes (preferably on top of the stove, where the heat from the oven will keep the cookie sheet warm a little longer) so that the heat of the cookie sheet cooks the bottom of the cookie just a bit longer and makes it slightly crispy, while the top stays chewy. This is important: don’t leave the cookies in the oven longer because this will cook the whole cookie, and you will lose the gooey chewiness that makes these cookies so good. When you can touch the cookie sheet, remove the cookies to a rack or paper towels for cooling. One last tip: cool the cookie sheet completely before putting dough on it again, so it doesn’t melt the raw dough you’re about to put on it.  I usually run cold water over the back of it for a second or two to cool it.

Once you have your dough consistency and timing right, the rest of the baking is easy: drop the dough by spoonfuls onto cookie sheets, and freeze each sheetful of cookies while the previous batch bakes.

The result is a perfectly creamy, chewy chocolate chip cookie, with a slightly crisp bottom that helps hold that chewy cookie together long enough to get it from cookie sheet to serving plate to mouth, where it then melts like nirvana.

This may sound like more trouble than it really is, but it’s easy when you get into the rhythm of load cookie sheets – put in freezer – bake – cool and it is worth the little extra effort. These cookies are dense, chewy and slightly crispy on the bottom. They don’t really soak up milk if dunked (no air in the dough, no pockets for milk), but served with cold milk “chasers” there’s perhaps nothing better on earth. (Okay, so I’m a total chocolate chip cookie junky…………)